what criterion do you use to judge an actor's performance

"ty lerper ry" less funny tho

i dunno dude

i can't say i use any one criteria cos there are a lot of different, and maybe mutually exclusive, ways of being interesting or compelling.

i'm a huge fan of character actors and TV bit players, so i can be really satisfied and impressed with someone really knocking out a great 0:45 as a victim on csi or whatever. there's nothing wrong with figuring out what your schtick is and getting it down to a science. it was like a light going off, in the brief time in college when i thought i wanted to be an actor, watching the wizard of oz for the first time in forever and realizing that all of dorothy's companions were amazing performers, totally specific and fearless and seamless, total pros.

one thing i do really love tho is actor's who have the stagey discipline to really work on language, so I'll always probably over-rate actors who do well with material where the language is very uniquely constructed and moves at its own rhythm -- if u can thrive in mamet or the coens or on deadwood, i'll think you're a good actor.

eh stray apostrophe there

"Madea" is already a variation of "mother dear"

(according to the wikipedia page I was just reading a second ago)

which page makes no mention, in its name etymology, of any other famous theatrical woman whose name sounds a bit like that

fucking appalling

I don't mind Tyler Perry stuff -- sometimes it's entertainingly quaint. But a lot of it is really hard to swallow straight up, as opposed to sitting around thinking about how incredibly archetypal all the characters are and thinking about what those archetypes mean. At point they're practically pantomimes.

Also I don't know much about the guy, but I respect his whole deal here -- building something up from regional theater, being really in touch with his audience but in a way that's accessible to lots of people, being really prolific (it's easier to be prolific when you deal in archetypes, but still, I admire the ability to just churn out working narratives), keeping business control of all his stuff -- ... I mean, it's all stuff that seems commendable, and it's hard to begrudge the guy success he'd appear to have worked up pretty much on his own steam

I don't begrudge the process or his success at all! I begrudge the fact that I really, really, really hate what he does.

I am interested in serious answers to this thread because it's something thats always troubled me, how to judge a good vs bad performance, perhaps because it seems like something even more resistant to a consumer satisfaction response than other elements of a movie. Or not. Maybe I've just become sort of frustrated that the first thing people turn and say to me after a movie ends is " did you like that?" as if it's the most interesting thing to discuss.

er ryan there have been a whole bunch of serious answers on this thread

b.o. biz is consistently up THIS year...

bcz of Paul Blart Mall Cop, Madea Goes to Jail, etc.

― Dr Morbius, Monday, February 23, 2009 2:00 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

homie it is FEBRUARY

you're not going to gain anything by bitching about how people like to go to stupid movies.

Not remotely what I'm arguing! It's that the numbers are all out there that the % of foreign and non-Hollywood (not faux-Hollywood predigested pap like Slumdog and Madea) distributed "product" has never been lower; google and pick an article. It's hardly even a tiny niche market anymore.

Anyway, wrong thread.

I know! I like them! Sorry should have specificied "keep em coming"

there's a difference between star quality and acting. most american "event movie" leading role types are movie stars first, actors second. they have qualities that attract and hold attention -- looks, charisma, gravitas, relatabilty, the abililty to embody certain human types or emotional states -- but beyond that, they're usually fairly uninteresting as actors. they rarely break through the surfaces of their roles to anything rich or surprising underneath. instead, they simply do a decent job of not seeming too actorly while attending to the basic business of being magnetic.

great acting, to me, is that which expands on the character as written, opening up depths and subtleties that aren't simple explications of plot points or obvious character traits. versimilitude and truth are part of it, but aren't the whole thing. its possible for a performance to be highly stylized yet still intriguing, or for one to be superficially authentic yet dull. basically, i want to be shaken somehow, captured, taken through the outline of the character to something within.

Please try not to be frustrated by the fact that people, after watching a movie with you, will ask you if you enjoyed it. People do that with everything. I mean, people will ask you that about sleeping.

I think the difficulty of answering this is that different projects demand really different things from actors, yes? But I guess you're asking about sort of conventional dramatic acting, for the most part ...

(There's also a disconnect between skillful acting and acting that just serves the project -- e.g., one of my favorite acting things about Twin Peaks is the way the seemingly horrible acting of the guy who plays Leo makes the character seem a billion times scarier; he is like a developmentally disabled surfer who will beat you with soap in a sock)

Some stars are excellent actors, though (Davis, Bogart, Kate Winslet, to name just three).

so contenderizer, essentially you're going with "tittays"

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/big-name-wga-showrunners-send-open-letter-to-producer-tyler-perry/

There's also a disconnect between skillful acting and acting that just serves the project

Yes. See most Bunuel films.

I find contenderizer's post to be almost meaningless. Dealing entirely in intangibles basically means you get to wave your hands around and say "that's acting/that's not acting" without actually having to say why.

c'mon dan he's very clearly asking where the titties at

Jordan, my editor was on some film site's "roundtable" and when he mentioned The Witnesses (French film set at the dawn of AIDS) as one of the best films he'd seen, these other film bloggies basically said "wow, that's obscure, who would ever see that?" very dismissively.

Way to misread.

ERIK: Ed, are those your five? If they are, then you win the Manohla Dargis Award for lauding the most little-seen movies of the year. The widest release of three of your five (Summer, Secret, Witnesses) didn’t even make double digits. I’m talking three theaters across the whole effin’ country.

Which is to say: More than people not seeing these movies, they’re not even getting the chance to not see them. This is not a comment upon your choices. This is a comment upon the system currently in place.

how do you judge a musician's performance? me I like to count the notes. more notes, better musician.

i think contenderizer should go to see more plays

I find contenderizer's post to be almost meaningless. Dealing entirely in intangibles basically means you get to wave your hands around and say "that's acting/that's not acting" without actually having to say why.

― Lots of praying with no breakfast! (HI DERE), Monday, February 23, 2009 1:44 PM (2 minutes ago)

well to be fair it's all intangibles! people are people innit. though i don't think there's much difference between star quality and acting.

sorry jaymc, "This is not a comment upon your choices" is very unconvincing in the whole context of that forum. ie, "I’m talking three theaters across the whole effin’ country."

I don't think acting is all intangibles. There are certain things you do to evoke particular emotions/characters and some people are more successful at doing this than others; one of the reasons why DDL tends to be so fucking amazing in movies is because of his psycho method style where he pretty much turns himself into whichever character he's portraying throughout filming, creating a consistency of character that others find difficult to match.

laurence olivier was able to match that consistency of character without doing any method work

"Star quality" is a form of performance, sure, whether it's in a film or not, but I do think isn't reasonable to that star-style screen magnetism is a different type of acting than what we consider really penetrating / vulnerable / emotionally deep acting. (Awards tend to go to the latter.)

I do think it IS reasonable to say etc.

i'm just articulating what i value. it's subjective and intangible because that's the nature of the art appreciation. there aren't any objective standards for this kind of thing. i seem to be especially attracted to what i perceive as the intelligence, wit and/or emotional complexity of a performance -- but different people judge and value those qualities differently.

i mean, the only cut-and-dried rule i can thin of is, "don't be stupid, fake and boring at the same time." which suggests that smart, convincing and compelling = greatness, and i suppose i can go along with that.

one of the reasons why DDL tends to be so fucking amazing in movies is because of his psycho method style where he pretty much turns himself into whichever character he's portraying throughout filming, creating a consistency of character that others find difficult to match.

But this is vague too!

how is that vague

I really like this idea of consistetency a lot.

stars are great at being themselves, actors are great at being other people

I like DDL's "star" acting in The Last of the Mohicans and The Boxer lots more than Gangs of New York.

i dunno, he's known for that know and his roles are all this off the charts operatic crazy shit. imagine him as say clooney's character in burn after reading, or some other comedy, it'd never work. i'm not down on the guy and i think he's great but i'm kind of over giving huge props to ppl doing the hardcore method shit.

xps

how is that vague

― Mr. Que, Monday, February 23, 2009 7:53 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

because all he is saying is that he is amazing because his performances are amazing

Dan said DDL is great because of his amazing technical skill makes his performances consistent, which may be true, but it says little about what this technique is, or its relation to consistency.

(slocki: exactly)

charisma and onscreen confidence makes for great actors more than the other shit sometimes.

plus WTF is wrong with appreciation of tangible but non-quantifiable, subjective qualities? insistence that criticism must dwell primarily in the realm of the documentable, provable & measurable seems awfully boring to me.

not to mention impossible

"I will now scientifically prove that nicole kidman is a bad actress"

one of the reasons why DDL tends to be so fucking amazing in movies is because of his psycho method style where he pretty much turns himself into whichever character he's portraying throughout filming, creating a consistency of character that others find difficult to match.

you know who else did this? sean astin in lotr -- he was always looking out for elijah wood and was super protective on set, asking if he was getting worn out, getting him food and stuff, basically samwise mode 24/7 (i heard this on a very informative commentary track btw). no oscars for sean astin to date.

plus WTF is wrong with appreciation of tangible but non-quantifiable, subjective qualities? insistence that criticism must dwell primarily in the realm of the documentable, provable & measurable seems awfully boring to me.

― welcome little swetty (contenderizer), Monday, February 23, 2009 7:58 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no but if you're having a discussion about what makes a performance good, saying something more substantial than "goodness" is helpful

charisma and onscreen confidence makes for great actors more than the other shit sometimes.

― omar little

i'd say that charism + confidence makes for memorable/appealing/compelling performances.

My point isn't that "method acting is the end-all, be-all", it was that method-acting is what makes DDL great; it is a tangible thing you can point to. There are things about every actor out there who gets accolades or who gets shat upon that you can pick out as evidence for their worth as an actor and how that informs "good acting" and describing that as "they bring out the inner meaning of the character" actually short-changes the whole process IMO.

One of my favorite performances of last year was James Franco in "Pineapple Express". He, to my knowledge, isn't a method actor, but he pretty easily slid into the skin of a desperate-for-friends amiable drug dealer who was equal parts likeable wkiw and clingily repellent and he made it seem effortless. I thought that was a great role for him and it really raised my impression of him as an actor.

Do I know what he did, technically, to get that? No. I wish I did; it would help me with the stage stuff I do.

i think contenderizer should go to see more plays

what is weird for me is that w/live performances i feel like i have better capacity for judging performances even if i dont understand the technical things that make a performance vital

but watching movies/tv im basically an aspie like i honestly cant tell the difference between a ddl performance and matthew mac one except that the idea of ddl in how to lose a guy in 10 days is megalulz 2 me. and i was listening to the S1 mad men commentary tracks this wknd and there were all these moments were the ppl commentating fell into a reverant hush about a performance and i was just ???. w/e level ppl process "believability" on i feel like i'm deaf and blind to